ALLAN MCCOLLUM:
If you can draw these simple forms–
the ball, cone, cube,
and cylinder– you can draw
a real picture the very first
time you try.
- I had an Uncle– his name was
Jon Gnagy– who had a television show
Learn to Draw.
-Today we're going to draw
a snow scene, in which we make
the paper work for us.
We don't have to do too much
work ourselves.
- And he would design these
drawings that he could then
teach other people how do to.
- Just put in those ragged
strokes, always remembering that
a pine tree is a rough cone form.
That post, you know,
is a cylinder form,
so you shade it down the left,
like this, to really make it
Round out.
Remember, our light's coming
from the other– upper right.
Yes, it used to be that the
mailbox was the chief point of
contact, but, you know,
nowadays, a lot of these folks
have television.
-You know, I knew him, and
I just got the feeling that it
never occurred to him to come up
with a painting or drawing that
he couldn't tell someone else
step-by-step how to do.
So I was just a child,
but that influenced me.
Whenever I design a project,
it's in my head while I'm
designing it that I would be
able to show someone else how to
do it.
This looks a little bare up
here, but for now, it's okay,
I guess.
The drawings that I sent
to Sao Paulo were done in 1989,
and they were created from
templates that I made in 1988.
The stimulus for this particular
drawings were triggered by an interest
in heraldry and the way that
families come up with images to
represent their family.
And I was thinking about
symbols, and I was thinking,
"Well, okay, we typically create
singular symbols so that we can
all feel we belong."
Like, we look at the American
flag, and we say, "Oh, we're all Americans."
It occurred to me that if one
used a certain kind of logic
and really worked at it,
one could come up with a system
that would produce a shape for
everybody on the planet.
The idea of trying to picture
a billion or a million
Is something we think we can do.
But we can't.
Say you're a general in the
army, and you have to send
al these troops out to have
a battle, and you know only
so many are going to come back,
and it's gonna break your heart
and make you sick unless you
start thinking of them as
all alike in some way:
just soldiers, just units, you know.
And, I mean, that's an extreme
example, but there's times when
you have to think about people
in categories, or you'll go crazy.
But that can go wrong also, and
it's something you have to watch
and think about.
One of the things that I'm
a little concerned about is,
when you get, like, a whole
bunch of the same width
and the same...
- Mm-hmm.
- you know, that's just another
thing to...
- Wait, you mean like different sizes?
- Like, you don't want two the
same size together.
You don't want two the same
width together.
You don't want two...
- Yeah.
- I mean, it's so funny.
It has nothing to do with what's
in the frame, you know?
[both chuckle]
Sometimes you can't do anything
about it, but if you can,
you know, shift it so that--
-Okay, so I'll
double-check that.
-Yeah, I mean, that's just
one thing.
In my youth, I worked in
factories quite a lot.
I mean, I worked in industrial
kitchens quite a lot.
And my parents worked in
factories.
I found myself wanting to try to
work in quantities and make
things that were singular and
unique at the same time.
We probably define uniqueness by
thinking, "Oh, it's not
mass-produced."
I felt I wanted to resolve that
on a higher level.
But there is, of course, the
drama of thousands of things.
It can be nightmarish, or it can
be wonderful feeling of
abundance, and it can go back
and forth.
And there's a lot of
emotionality when you see
thousands of things.
Some people would want to run
out of the room when there's
too many objects to look at,
and other people would stand
there in awe.
There's also a kind of science
fiction element in here where–
of, like, something that sort of
takes over and grows.
When I'm juggling ideas of what
I'm gonna do next,
one of the considerations that's major
always in my mind is, "Does it
make a good story?"
I put it in my mind that it
would be interesting to work
with people I had never met,
that I only communicated with
over email or telephone.
Like, you go in to see the exhibit.
Well, it could just be looked at
as a bunch of little decorative objects.
But there's a story
that goes with it.
You can tell it rather quickly.
I wanted it to be: "Oh, the
artist went on the internet.
The artist found four people
from the state of Maine who all
of whom worked from their homes
and all of whom made shapes,
and he never met them.
It was sort of about the–
the exotic, faraway place,
I mean, which, to me–
I've only been to Maine once in
my life, and it seems very
exotic to me, Maine.
[low, deep rumbling]
And I started becoming
interested in people who had
businesses in their homes and
also kind of very independent.
And kind of like the contrary to
our obsession with globalism
right now, you know, is that
there are people locally all
around us working in their
homes, making thousands of things.
I looked on the web.
I looked up "Maine," you know,
On– googled, "Maine, craft,
home," you know, all the words
that would lead me to people who
worked at home and made craft
in Maine.
And I had to sift through
hundreds and hundreds and–
and slowly realized, "This is
a huge thing in maine: you know,
people working at home making
crafts and then selling them on
the internet.
I chose a narrow group of them
who basically did shapes,
Like rubber stamps,
ornaments,
silhouettes,
and cookie cutters.
And then I wrote them lengthy
emails about my work and what
my interests were and why
I wanted do to this, I mean,
emails that--much too long,
I'm sure.
- I had no idea who he was.
My first thought was that he
might be a kid claiming
to be an artist.
Of course, you don't ever know
on an email.
And then after I investigated
and went to his website,
I found out that he was quite
an accomplished contemporary artist.
[metal clicks softly]
-The cookie cutter people?
I don't know–
I don't know how they–
I never watched how they did
what they did, so they–
If they invented a new–
a way they hadn't done before–
I do know that they used to make
snowflakes, and there's no way
this shape is more complicated
than the snowflakes
they were making.
[laughs]
-Some of his shapes were very
difficult.
It was challenging.
[chuckles]
And actually, I would say, after
making the shapes for Allan,
That I'm improved.
I mean, I'm better at what I do
because– because of that
project, because I actually
learned how to do some things better.
- I've been doing
combinatorial projects for 40 years.
All my projects have had
combinatorial elements, where
I'm taking a vocabulary of parts
and putting them together to
make something else, you know,
which is very computerlike,
but there was never any computer Involved.
The Shapes Drawings Individual Works Project,
neither of which
involved any computers.
The drawings even look like
the shapes that I'm working on
now, but they were all done by
hand with pencil.
And I didn't have a computer at
that time.
In those days, I was using
photocopiers and stencils and
things like that.
Whereas if I had to do this with
stencils, it would've taken me
an hour, but what I can do now
is just reach up here
and copy one shape, like that,
and then go over here
and copy another one,
and then I can put those together.
And then copy a bottom,
and put that together.
And then copy, you know,
a bottom that goes on the right,
and we'll put that together.
And then I have a shape,
and it has its own I.D. Number.
I mean, this just doesn't take
very long.
So with these four shapes, I can
make around 200 or so million
unique shapes.
But there's another system where
I use six shapes,
and then there's these things
I call necks, like your neck.
Like, this is a body with
a neck, and then the top part
is a head.
So then once you start using
this system, you can produce
60 billion shapes.
Once I got all the shapes made,
I started combining them into
tops and bottoms.
Then instead of making four
parts, I would only have to put
together two at a time.
Then I put them in what I call
arrays of 144.
So I can copy this array and
combine it with this array.
Then I'm making 144 shapes
at once, and that's called
a collection.
That's how I produce them:
in collections of 144.
The number 144, there's an irony
to it 'cause it's considered
a gross in industry.
This is one of the collections
that was sent to horace varnum
to do the wooden shapes.
-Every one is absolutely
unique.
Every one is different.
ome, you sit there,
and you work with them.
You cut with them.
And it's almost like sitting in
a psychologist's office, and you
see shapes: this is a wolf head.
This is an angel.
This is–
So it's fun.
[machine whirring]
See, it's soft enough that it
won't cause any damage, unless
you're doing it for an hour or two.
It's what thieves do to take off
their fingerprints.
[laughs]
-The idea of making an object
for everybody in the world
is absurd.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, I couldn't possibly
do it.
But it would be nice if everyone
in the world– doesn't this sound
like a child talking–
if everyone in the world could
agree on a symbolic system,
You know?
And it hasn't happened yet,
but it's– I think it's–
it might, you know,
one day.
[soft electronic music]